§ 01 — THE LIGHT
Everything Points South
We were in this building at the end of the day, no artificial lights on, and the space was full of diffused natural light. That doesn’t happen by accident.
The south face carries most of the glazing, and we used the roofline to bring light into places it wouldn’t otherwise reach. The appliance wall — fridge, ovens, pantry — sits on the interior side of the kitchen. We put a run of high windows above it so that wall gets washed in south light all day, even though it doesn’t face the lake. You’re putting groceries away with good light. Most people never consciously notice it, and then they wonder why the kitchen feels good.
Matt and his team at Conklin Construction have been running a clean site and holding tight tolerances throughout. The framing shows.
§ 02 — THE MUSKOKA ROOM
Rumford, Timbers, and Trees
The Muskoka room at the far end of the cottage is the room this video should be about. It sits at the lake end of the building, surrounded on three sides by trees and water, with exposed timbers running across the ceiling. In this room, you are genuinely in the middle of the landscape.
The fireplace is a Renaissance Rumford — a tall, shallow firebox design that’s been around for a couple of centuries for good reason. It radiates heat outward into the room rather than funneling it up the flue. A standard firebox sends a lot of the warmth you’re trying to keep straight up and out. The Rumford keeps it in the room. For a cottage used into the shoulder seasons, that’s not a minor distinction.
We also made a deliberate call about the TV in the living room: it’s beside the fireplace, not above it. A TV mounted over a fireplace forces you to look up at an uncomfortable angle all evening. We put it at eye level on a large wall, next to the fire, where it belongs.
§ 03 · THE TOUR
Watch the Full Walkthrough
We filmed this with Conklin Construction — the interior is mostly framed and starting to close in.
§ 04 — THE KITCHEN
Cooking at the Lake
In the kitchen, we’ve been thinking carefully about upper cabinets. Uppers are useful — storage at eye height and above. But on this project, the windows facing the lake are what you should be looking at when you’re cooking, not cabinet doors. Every cabinet you add to the lake-facing wall is a piece of view you’re trading away. So we’ve been deliberate about where uppers go and where they don’t.
The kitchen flows into the dining room with a low wall between them — a two-by-six separation that creates a subtle boundary without closing anything off. The dining room side of that wall is a bar ledge. The kitchen side is counter. It gives the spaces their own identity while keeping the flow open. There’s a covered patio immediately off the dining room for when you want the meal to extend past the table.
In the main bathroom, we dropped the floor in the shower area during framing — planned ahead, built it into the structural package — so the tile floor in the shower sits flush with the bathroom floor beside it. No threshold, no ramp, no awkward height transition. Just a flat floor with a linear drain. It’s the kind of decision that takes five minutes to make during framing and saves a real headache during finishing.
§ 05 — THE THROUGH-LINE
Light Is the Material
This building doesn’t use one dramatic gesture to feel good. It uses light, carefully placed, in every room. High windows on an interior wall. A fireplace room that sits in trees. A kitchen that faces the lake without competing with itself. A staircase with natural light running down it so you actually want to use it.
The material choices, the fireplace selection, the floor framing decisions — they all serve the same thing: a building that feels connected to where it is, from every room, at every hour of the day.
